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2012 TT ZERO action, start to finish

Fans of electric motorsport generally have a hard time finding decent event coverage. Typically, it's not offered on TV, and video gleaned from the internet usually comes from either fans or individual teams and often lacks the professional production values we are accustomed to. Now, however, and possibly for a limited time only, footage from Britain's ITV 4 featuring the 2012 TT Zero is available to watch online.

Featuring quick pre- and post-race interviews with the top riders along with clips from the roadside, helicopter and on board the bikes, viewers are taken from the start line to the champagne showers in a somewhat condensed 13 minutes. We get to see some awesome footage as well as a fair amount of insight from the professional commentators. For instance, race leader Michael Rutter suffered from a loose "gas tank," forcing him to keep low to hold it in place.

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Anonymous

2 Years Ago

Wow, this is the best coverage I've seen of ANY race, not just electric or alternative fuel / propulsion racing. Outstanding job by the producers, commentators, helicopter pilots & cameramen. I enjoyed it very much and even clapped a few times. The bikes look and sound so good. EV's no longer look or perform lame. Hats off to all teams that participated, and hopefully those who had to retire before or during the race will continue to try to conquer that mountain. Also, I now know how to pronounce Motoczysz.

Anonymous

The announcer seemed honestly surprised to see some of the speeds that they were hitting at times. There definitely were some spots there where they looked like they were really flying! This is really good stuff to see. I'm probably one of the most happy folks out there to see The Ton broken, for reasons I won't be sharing here. But now I've got to do my honest duty of pointing out the facts and numbers for what they are. It is super cool that EV racers so quickly beat a record set by 1950's gasser bikes. But really, that just means the race EV bikes have just made it to the 1950's. I love EV motorcycles, but I absolutely want to avoid unrealistic expectations for anyone who might consider buying an EV motorcycle any time soon. Even the best street bikes you can buy from companies like Zero and Brammo are still nowhere near the power of these race bikes, which in turn are still nowhere near their gasser brothers. So keep your expectations honest and in check. OK, enough of the mandatory wet blanket. That looked like one hell of a fun ride! I can't wait for this technology to trickle down into the hands of consumers like me. I can just see myself flying down the road on something like a Brammo Empluse, playing Jr. TT racer (at scale speeds)!

in fairness, none of the gas bikes on the course are actually normal street legal bikes, probably not even the superstocks. While an electric prototype is much close to being street legal than most of the gassers here. And it is not about the peak power but the sustained delivery of high power due to battery limitations

Yeah - they might not be as impressive as some gas bikes, but the gap is closing pretty rapidly :) The fastest electric motorcycle is the one you build with your own hands and knowledge. The parts already exist to build something drastically faster than what these guys are toying with right now. Give it time :)

interesting to see it become mainstream and how the people struggle to get comfortable with these new weird future machines : ) with a bit of intelligent aerodynamics I see no reason why they can't threaten the super bike times. that should turn some heads

Aerodynamics isn't enough. They need much, much more power in order to get into the 130 mph range. They need both a higher discharge rate AND much more storage capacity. And they need that additional power to be both lighter and smaller. Aero only goes so far, especially when handling becomes so important to survival at higher speeds. Motoczysz already went pretty far with their aerodynamics on this bike, and they are still ~30 mph behind. They will need a couple of those 10X battery technology improvements that researchers throw around to come true. Or it will take year and years of single-digit incremental improvement like we've been seeing.

Higher discharge ( 40-90C ) batteries have existed for years now.. these guys just aren't using them yet :). Only the drag racing teams have JUST got hip to them, like last year.. Aerodynamics helps a ton due to aero drag following a cube law. Ask any salt flats racer who's put together something teardrop shaped. Aerodynamics could literally be enough to provide the needed speed boost. Next year will be more insane. Just you watch.

2WM Higher discharge batteries aren't going to help much. As it is all riders claim it's tempting to use more power, but they have to conserve energy to make it round the track with the fastest overall time. Also typically higher discharge batteries usually have less capacity, which would mean the riders would have to be even more conservative. Drag racers have the exact opposite problem - the need as much power as possible for a very limited time...

Dan, I think you fail to understand the limitations of aerodynamics on 2-wheeled open rider vehicles, and the greatly negative impacts on handling. There is a big reason why the dust-bin wheel covers have been banned from racing. They cause bikes to fly off the road and hurt/kill racers. This isn't drag racing where you just need to know the wind speed and direction for a few seconds on a straight stretch of track. This is road racing on a notoriously windy and unforgiving road course. The rider doesn't just sit in the middle and tuck, the rider has to move on the bike and lean into turns. aero isn't always the answer to everything, especially when too much aero can (and has in the past) had very bad impacts on safety and handling.

In 4 years time, the E-bikes went from the mid-80's mph to 104mph. In comparison to 1957 when the first 100mph lap was turned, it was about 10 years back (1947) that they were running in the mid-80's. Would this be a somewhat proper comparison of technologies?

That is a pretty good comparison, but you do have to take into account that EV motorcycles have the advantage of leveraging the brakes, the suspension, and tire technology from gas bikes. That means that EV motorcycles have been able to focus more on drivetrain and aerodynamics and tuning, while borrowing a whole bunch of proven parts from gassers. The gassers back then had to do everything from scratch. They were really a bunch of effin' nutters taking 1950's technology around the course at those speeds! Can anyone say "drum brakes"?!? Don't get me wrong, I think EV motorcycles are developing at a pretty quick pace. But the guys who did it first back in the 50's have a certain cache that comes with being first that nobody can repeat.

yeah, after watching the videos and seeing the constraints they were running under (wet patches, lack of practice and experience, holding back because of uncertainties on remaining power, etc) that they will be moving up another 5-10 mph next year.

I agree, another 5-10 mph is certainly within reach really soon. It's the next 10 after that, and the next 10 after that which will become exponentially harder to achieve. The downside is that these big name factory racers just don't hang out and race these company's EV bikes to get practice. Their day job is to race the gassers. Jumping on these EV bikes is just a moon-lighting job for the big name racers. Frankly, it is going to be a while until top racers switch over to EV racing as their day job so they can get in the volume of practice laps that they get on the top gassers.

Great coverage for the event and a great event! I have to agree with Jason, that is one of the best produced videos I've ever seen for a motor sports event. Great coverage, facts and points of interest, comparisons with the superbikes, explanations of strategy and constraints. Wonderful. As for the future: They did 104mph with almost zero data, little to no practice or experience with the machines, dealing with wet patches, guessing when and where they could use more power and when to conserve. After watching that, I'm convinced they could easily do 115-120mph laps with more experience and another year or two of battery advances. They have plenty of power to get there, just need a little more battery and some experience to know how much to conserve and when to gun it.

I think McGuinness and the Mugen team flubbed their math to some degree. Judging from how much speed they picked up throughout the race, they probably thought they'd need to conserve power throughout the run; when the telemetry told them otherwise, they were able to open it up further and further. They'll learn for next year, but MotoCzysz will probably have a big enough power boost in the motor for next year to negate the advantage the Shinden had this year.